Dr. Allison Bates, founder of The ALLICE Collective, is a Licensed Clinical Social Work Supervisor with close to 15 years of experience providing mental health services to children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families. In addition to her work with The ALLICE Collective, Allison also owns and manages a group counseling practice and provides supervision and mentorship to pre-licensed mental health clinicians.

Allison is extremely passionate about helping Black men and women find safe spaces to address mental health challenges and develop the skills needed to manage societal pressures, microaggressions, and systemic discriminatory practices in their personal and professional lives. She also stresses the importance of educating Black communities on the connection between mental and physical health due to the high rates of death from chronic diseases. Allison is deeply committed to ensuring her students learn how to assist clients in connecting past trauma to current physical health challenges and faulty thinking and behavioral patterns. She is honored to be in a position to educate and guide future clinicians and truly cherishes her role as gatekeeper of within her profession.

Allison believes that individual healing will lead to healthier relationships, families, and communities as a whole.